This blog will present news items about the motion picture business, with emphasis on lower budget, independent film in most cases. Some reviews or commentaries on specific films, with emphasis on significance (artistic or political) or comparison, are presented. Note: No one pays me for these reviews; they are not "endorsements"!

About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Woody Harrelson sounds earnest as he narrates the hour-plus
documentary “ETHOS”, directed by Peter McGrain. Harrelson is sometimes joined
by Noam Chomsky, Bill Hogan and Howard Zinn, and even Michael Moore. The film
(2011) comes from Cinema Libre and Media for Action.

The film makes a familiar argument that the ideals of
democracy and rule of the people are subverted by the moneyed classes, who want
to control individuals. The Federal
Reserve is presented as having been set up by a cabal of secret bankers. Woodrow Wilson is quoted as saying that debt
to private interests will undermine democracy – but remember that Wilson was
willing to jail people for sedition, especially opposing the draft.

The film hits hard the role and “abuse of the media”, which
it sees as a puppet of the corporate state. It depicts Freudian science as
antithetical to the self-expression of the individual and mentions Freud’s
nephew, Binrays, as the father of modern “public relations”.

It shows a variety of images, including one of coal mining
and mountaintop removal.

The film discusses the concept of the national id chip, and
warns that someday the government may mandate that we have chips implanted in
our bodies so we can be tracked. Some
people actually want that. The film also
tracks back the ease with which the government has exploited public fear since
9/11.

Harrelson mentions climate change and particularly peak oil,
which is supposed to climax in 2015.

But toward the end, Harrelson suggests that, in a market
economy, the consumer still has the ultimate power, to refuse to spend money on
the products of evil companies. But this
is isn’t possible, of course, with local monopolies, like power companies.

I think it would be interesting to make a documentary on a
variation of this theme, specifically, the pressure on the individual “who is
different” to conform to the goals of the family and surrounding majority in
the community. I can look at many
episodes, conversations and incidents in my own life, particularly during my
own “coming of age” and later after “retirement” (and especially relating to my
late mother’s eldercare) and come up with some definite impressions. The “different” individual is expected to
learn to take care of himself (herself) and then provide for other people in a
manner more or less commensurate with gender.
He (or she) is expected to understand and make differential “sacrifice”
(an idea particularly prevalent with the Vatican). He is supposed to make and maintain emotional
attachments in a manner reflective of the needs of others. In short, he (she) learns to express “complementarity”. And he remains silent about his own views
unless he has real responsibility for others.
The “moral majority” suggests that the stability and sustainability of
civilization depends on reigning in on self-indulgence of individuals. But, nevertheless, those in “power” seem to
have achieved personal “complementarity” but turn around and become corrupt in
their desire to stay in power. It then
seems that sustainability has something to do with the individual’s being able
to go outside of “the box” and empathize with others whose circumstances are
very different from those in his own family.

I am a media position in an unusual, perhaps precarious
person. I am curiously both powerful and
powerless. I was able to climb onto an
unusual observational perch and communicate to the world and gain some
recognition through user-generated content.
This is a development really not covered by the film. Because of my
background, I became very preoccupied with my own stability, my own
productivity as an individual contributor at work, and with exploring my own
feelings in relationships. After “retirement”,
circumstances forced me to see how I had missed so much connectivity that
others take for granted.

Monday, July 30, 2012

I can relate to the idea of creating the ideal person
(potential lover) on paper as a character in a novel. I don’t have one “idee fixe” for perfection;
it keeps shifting according to my latest experience (and any interaction with
an interesting person can make his “properties” seem significant).

But in 1988, in a novel manuscript called “Tribunal and
Rapture”, I did have a more fixed fantasy, who gradually becomes disclosed,
first back in metro life and then in a hidden ashram, as the rest of the world
falls apart (bear in mind, these were Cold War years). I did have the idea that I could write my own
personal future history. I named the
80-inch tall character Craig Nickerstahn, a name that came in a dream.

In “Ruby Sparks”, we have a slender, nerdish but appealing
young man Calvin, a once-successful novelist (Paul Dano, already echoing a
similar role in “Being Flynn” [March 15, 2012]. I suppose that Paul could fit
one of my ideals. (He was really compelling in “There Will Be Blood” (Jan. 4,
2008), a film showing where I actually “met” someone.)

Now, I don’t know why Calvin still writes on a manual
typewriter, in a film where he also uses a smart phone. If he wrote on a computer (eventually he
does), the fantasy trace would be stored in the cloud.

I had an Royal typewriter, Elite type, from the 1940s, while
in high school. For college, my father gave me a Pica typewriter with chemistry
and math symbols added. I had that
machine fixed numerous times until the 1980s.

It’s hard to believe in real “writer’s block”. What’s hard with fiction is to master your
own content after you have written it. You
have to live in your fictitious world, and know what you want.

Nevertheless, Calvin goes to
a therapist (Elliot Gould) to get over his problem.

Now “The Girlfriend” (no intentional relation to the
independent film by that name that I reviewed on July 16) becomes his
successful second novel, but the phantom Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan) seems like a
character out of “The Tempest”. Yes,
whatever he writes (that is, types by hand), she does, almost turning into a
robot – a fantasy.

Dano is an executive producer of the film. Dano, in an
interview, explains how Calvin falls in love with his character, and then she
materializes. But one could already be
in love with a fantasy of a character that one creates. (Imagine being “in love” with “Will” in “Days
of our Lives”.)

No question, though, that his dog, who really loves him,
will find the real Ruby for him.

The film, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris,
written by Zoe, also offers some others who “made the A List” – including Chris
Messina, as Calvin’s doubting brother, Antonio Banderas, Annette Bening, and Steve Coogan.

I enjoyed the background music, especially a waltz passage that I believe comes from Verdi's opera "Rigoletto". I thought I caught a quick excerpt from Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre".

The film might be compared to "Barton Fink" (1991, the Coen Brothers, Fox) where a 40's screenwriter has writer's block.

Here's an oddity: the previews (of "Ruby") have a scene (mentioning a Spanish teacher) that doesn't seem to appear in the finished film. A deleted scene, maybe?

Sunday, July 29, 2012

The documentary “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” starts with a
touching scene presenting his cats around the artist’s Beijing studio “factory”.
One of the felines jumps up and operates
a handle to open a door to get his food.
Ai says that this is remarkable.
But when I lived in my first garden apartment in Dallas in 1979, I was “adopted”
by a male cat that knew how doors worked, recognized my car sound, and would
hide things in my apartment as a game.
And today, neighborhood cats (and foxes) know which houses have open outdoor
water faucets, and which yards have areas that pond during heavy rain.

Weiwei actually lived and worked in New York for about ten
years, but went back to Beijing in 1993, a few years after the Tieneman Square
massacre (1989). He would build his reputation, hiring artisans to work out his
ideas, and would be a major player in designing the Birds’ Nest stadium for the
2008 Olympics.

The film (directed by Alison Klayman, who filmed him working
for several years) seems more concerned with the arc of the artist’s life (the
way a documentary about Andy Warhol might be), than just the political message
about free speech. But that becomes important, after Weiwei tries to expose
shoddy construction practices after a major earthquake in Sichuan. The police would invade his home and beat him.
Later, he would be allowed to build a studio in Shanghai, and then see it torn
down, an event that he would satirize with a sham public celebration. He would “disappear” for 80 days in 2011, and
emerge with a $2.4 million “tax fine”, for which volunteers have raised about
$1 million.

The film gives some detail on the police action against blogger
Liu Xiaobo. A female official says, “we
didn’t punish him for his thoughts. It was only a problem when he published
them online on the Internet.” Xiaobo was arrested for "inciting" rebellion against the state. It's a curious concept. I guess if
I lived in China they would arrest me, too. The New York Times has a history of Xiaobo
here.

Weiwei would remain active most of the time on Twitter.

Sundance Selects is distributing the film. I saw it at
Landmark E Street Sunday afternoon in front of a fair crowd. The director had
been present for Q&A Friday and Saturday nights. The official site is here.

Note: the spelling of the first name is "Ai" but the "i" often displays as "l".

Viso has a YouTube trailer:

This film could be compared to Tribeca’s “High Tech, Low
Life” about Chinese blogger “Zola”, reviewed here April 26, 2012.

For "today's short film", please see my "International Issues" blog July 28 for a discussion of the 25-minute "Journeyman" film "One Child Policy".

Saturday, July 28, 2012

I remember in the early part of my high school junior year’s
“Virginia and U.S. History” that our ex-military history teacher made a lot of
the concept of “mother country” and associated mercantilism.

“The Special Relationship” (2010, HBO, dir. Richard
Loncraine) could refer to the modern day between “mother” and superpower son.
But it’s also about the relationship between new Labor party Prime Minister
Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton throughout most of Clinton’s presidency.

Martin Sheen looks and sounds like Tony Blair, and there are
some household scenes where his body is not as young as his face. However, Dennis Quaid, in playing Bill
Clinton, is kept covered up, maybe for good reason.

Whereas, in the early days, Blair’s main concern was
Northern Ireland and the IRA, soon it turned to Bosnia and Kosovo, and here
Blair became the hawk, touting “Onward Christian Soldiers”. His friend Clinton grimaces, saying that
Blair sounds almost like Jerry Falwell.

Blair is presented as having regarded Slobodan Milosevic as
an existential threat to the civilized world. The film has considerable
excerpted news footage of atrocities in the former Yugoslavia. In a private meeting, Blair urges that all of
NATO send ground troops, and Clinton refuses, saying that Blair does not grasp
how politically unacceptable it is for America to fight overseas on the ground.

The film, less than 90 minutes, concludes with brief
coverage of the 2000 election, and footage of the real Blair and George W.
meeting at Camp David.

The entire history, of course, seems oddly prescient of
9/11, which no one saw coming. The film
does not cover Clinton’s limited strikes against Al Qaeda, focusing entirely on
Bosnia. There’s one line where Clinton
says to Blair, “Don’t answer any questions about gays in the military.”

The film briefly covers the affair with Monica Lewinsky, the
“impeachment”, and Hillary Clinton’s (Hope Davis) calm handling of her husband’s
indiscretions.

Friday, July 27, 2012

There is a moment late in the documentary “The Queen of
Versailles”, where former billionaire David Siegel, 74, sits in a cluttered
room in his mansion (it almost looks like a hoarding site) and works
desperately to save his “world’s largest time-sharing company” (Westlake) and
gripes about the meal that his articulate wife, Jackie (44) has made for him.
He asks something like, do you know what it would be like to do without
electricity?

That struck me as an odd question for a “rich old ruler” to
pose. I doubt he has any clue as to what
EMP really means, but it could be a global equalizer.

The name of the film (directed by Lauren Greenfield) refers,
of course, to Jackie, and the film is in some sense her biography (not
his). Raised in upstate New York, she
had been trained as an IBM engineer, but left to model, and had survive one bad
marriage before meeting David.

Then, living on an island near Orlando, David decides that
isn’t good enough, and decides to buy a $100 million virtual replica of the
Versailles Palace, complete with extras like a baseball field (like John
Grisham, maybe – the Devil Rays are the nearest MLB team). He says he will do
it “because I can”. Hence the rest of
the movie title. As the film opens, he
also takes credit for throwing Florida to George W. Bush in the 2000 election,
and throws hints of illegality.

The film provides a cogent description of how the time-share
real estate business works. The heart of
Siege’s business seems to have been his Westlake hotel and casino in Las
Vegas. I did not visit this during my
recent visit to Las Vegas, and the movie’s end credits tell us it has finally
been foreclosed and no longer has Westlake’s name.

But the training sessions for sales employees are telling.
They remind me of the phrase “Always Be Closing” in the 2002 film “100 Mile
Rule”. Salesmen get prospects hooked on
the condo time shares on the first visit – on the theory that if you use it
every year, it is cheaper than a hotel.

Then, the 2008 financial crisis hits, with all its
derivatives and credit default swaps falling like a house of cards (or a house
built on sand). David fights the banks
to keep his casino-condo, but the couple can no longer afford Versailles, and
it sits and rots unfinished on the market.
The kids (she has seven of them, and enjoys having babies, she says –
and her husband still doesn’t need Viagra) might need student loans and real
careers.

The film won Best Director at Sundance. The official site (Magnolia Pictures) link is here.

Washington ABC station WJLA movie critic Arch Campbell noted that the director started working with the couple before the crash, intending to make a documentary just about the home, not knowing that it would turn into a story about economic downturn and rebirth.

I wondered what Jackie's world means for our moral debate on "marriage". Sure, there was complementarity, and a great deal of benefit.

I saw it before a modest Friday night crowd at the
Shirlington in Arlington, early show. The audience chuckled a lot at the rich
people eating caviar in new poverty.

Maybe Michael Moore would like this film. Or maybe Tom
Shadyac of “I am” (review here March 27, 2011) would say, David and Jackie have
a lot more than they “need”.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The animated feature “The Lion of Judah”, directed by Roger
Hawkins and Dercyk Broom, places a fictitious story of stable animals in
parallel with the Passion of the Christ.

A lamb Judah needs to develop his social capital to avoid
being sacrificed at the same time that Jesus goes through the passion, the
crucifixion, and finally Resurrection.
The other stable animals include a pig Horace, who will remind some
viewers of the 1995 Australian film “Babe”. (Oliver North actually liked that
film on his 90s talk radio show.) There
is also a rooster (Drake) and rat (Slink) and cow (Esmay).

The script (Brent Dawes) does explain quite clearly, in
Christian terms, why Jesus atones for all of our sins. But then it poses the question as to why
Judah must be sacrificed (too) to relieve others of having to account for their
own personal wrongdoings. This all provides
a twist on the concept of “personal responsibility”.

The DVD is distributed by Warner Brothers, but the
theatrical release had come from Rocky Mountain Pictures, and the film was
produced independently in South Africa by Character Matters and Sunrise
Productions. The film can be rented on YouTube for $3.99.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Imagine a documentary movie that starts with quoting a
fictitious moral speech. “You have sacrificed justice to mercy. You have
sacrificed independence for unity. You have sacrificed reason to faith. You
have sacrificed wealth to need.” This,
of course, comes from John Galt’s speech near the climax of “Atlas Shrugged.”

The film “Ayn Rand and the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged”
(2011, directed by Chris Mortensen, Mad Universe Pictures) begins with this
arresting quote.

After going through Ayn Rand’s early life in Russia and her
first novels and getting to “The Fountainhead”, it quotes her hero (Howard
Roark) as saying, something like “I must love the doing and love my work first,
not the people” (before I can actually help people).

By then, the film has shown images of America from the 1920s
through the post War 50s, and makes the case that the problem is invisible, a “philosophy” (which turns into "prophecy"). America, at one time a fount of freedom, had
been overrun by social consciousness.

The film then explains Rand’s concept that all the “doers”
of the world go on strike.

The film further reviews Rand’s background, indeed how she
had protected her parents’ family in Russia, but then goes beyond the idea that
Communism is thuggery to attributing to victims the moral responsibility for
their losses at the hands of others.
Altruism, as commonly understood, becomes a moral evil in Rand’s
world. The idea that “others are more
important than me” leads to decay. But
opposition to “self-sacrifice” is not the same thing as endorsing “piggishness”
or short-term greedy behavior. As in a
chess game, it’s sometimes not a good idea to grab pawns in the opening.

Eventually, the film develops the idea of personal autonomy or
individual sovereignty. Do you own your
own life? It certainly must no belong to
“the state”. But does it somehow belong
to “the community” in a personal sense for sustainability reasons. I start to wonder.

The film then covers the overwhelmingly negative reviews of “Atlas
Shrugged” after publication. Random House had wanted John Galt’s speech
removed. The most destructive review was
from Whitaker Chambers. Yet the book
became a commercial success, at one time rising to 4th Place on the
NYTimes best seller list.

The film covers the Financial Crisis of 2008 as an example
of how of some of Rand’s predictions came true.
It describes 2008 as an example of the failure of “crony capitalism”. It then explains the term “objectivism”. One side idea is that regular people should
take place in politics occasionally and then go back to being productive. Should writers and artists be expected to run
for office?

In my own experience, a commitment to “individualism” is challenged
by coercive pressure from others to actually be willing to support some of
their goals personally, even at sacrifice of my own, if the “need is great
enough. This includes openness to
personal relationships that might have been rejected or ignored, if they are
within some moral “goldolocks zone” of me.
Why? Because I am ultimately
dependent on “sacrifices” from others that I cannot see. Will the individualism of Rand enable people
to work together in a way to give the whole planet sustainability? Can private interests protect the power grid
from existential threats, or prevent climate change from destroying many areas
of the world? Well, some of these
problems might need individuals to invent things, just as Alan Turing did
during WWII.

You can’t be your brother’s keeper when you no longer have
anything to give. As in Greece right
now, the “looting runs dry.”

There is still a division, my mind, between “altruism”
(defined as participation in social capital or “eusociality”) as a moral necessity
for sustainability, and the idea that government can enforce it (without
becoming corrupt or “cronyized”). And
there is a connection, however nuanced, between “altruism” and the way people
seek and maintain relationships (influenced by the desire to procreate, or lack
of such desire).

The end: “You believe in life. You want to fight for it, to
die for it. I only want to live it.”

I reviewed “Atlas Shrugged: Par I” on April 15, 2011 on this
blog. Part II should appear in Fall 2012. I’m rather surprised it isn’t a cable
miniseries instead. The documentary
discusses the films near the end, as long as earlier attempts to develop a film
partly because of problems with Rand’s approving a script.

I 1998, I saw an earlier similar documentary “Ayn Rand: A
Sense of Life”, directed by Michael Paxton, during a visit to Dallas. That film had been distributed by Strand
Releasing and Fox Lorber.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

It
would sound strange to most American film buffs that you could do much in film
with an obscure cultural battle within Belgium between the Flemish and the
French Walloons, and that there is such a thing as a Belgian livestock mafia.
We don’t think about farming in Europe and the “Low Countries” now
in days of battles over finances and the euro.

Nevertheless,
when a young cattle farmer Jacky Vanmarsenille (Matthias Schoenaerts), who we
see pumping himself with shots of steroids and testosterone, sets a web of
tragedy and intrigue in motion when he is approached by a veterinarian to deal
with a Flemish beef trader. His chance to prove his manhood socially is
set off in motion, and we see this previous quiet bodybuilder going to the dark
side.

That’s
the setup of “Bullhead” (or “Rundskop”), a 2011 Oscar nominee for best foreign
language film by Michael R. Roskam, now on DVD from Image and DraftHouse.
There’s a horrific backstory that layers upon the current day murder
mystery that ensues. There’s a clue in Jacky’s womanish skin, which the
camera sometimes indulges. About forty minutes into the film, we
see a reenactment of an incident two decades before when Jacky, just starting
to learn about the meaning of sex and girls at age 10, is attacked by a girl’s
brother Bruno (David Murgia) who chops off all that matters.
Subsequently the doctors put Jacky on testosterone for life, and his father
even asks, “Will he be gay?”

In
fact, Jacky’s adult friend Diederik (Jeroen Perceval), lean but prematurely
bald, is gay, and Jacky doesn’t know it; and that hardly matters in the final
web of coincidences that get Jacky framed for a dealer’s murder. (It’s
rather like saying that the character Will’s homosexuality in the soap “Days of
our Lives” is turning out not to mean much now.) In the middle of the
film, there’s a more recent flashback where Jacky goes to a straight disco
(playing the same music I hear all the time at Town DC), and is told he has to
wear a shirt. That’s odd, as shirt removal is a ritual in “love trains” in gay
discos; for that matter, I’ve also wondered why some straight discos didn’t
allow tennis shoes.

This
is a brooding film, over two hours, with a string score by Raf Kuenen, music in
C# minor (I checked on my Casio) that reminds one of Richard Strauss’s
“Metamorphesen.” Toward the end, there is a staircase that recalls the
effect of a similar scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo".

On
the DVD, the director, after explaining that the rural mafia and other
conflicts in Belgium are real, talks about the characters. He compares
Jacky to Batman, someone who wants to be big after a childhood trauma, and even
mentions the analogy of locking himself in the bathroom. (It is a total
coincidence that I had rented this DVD the weekend of the Batman-related
tragedy -- the DVD came out rather quickly after a brief theatrical run spurred
by the Oscars -- but Roskam's comments seem accidentally all too relevant.) In
a similar interview, the actor Matthias explains that, because of the childhood
assault, Jacky will never be able to "give love" the way a man
normally does, even if he receives it.

The
"Making Of" short on the DVD shows how Matthias bulked up for the
part, using special nutritious supplements with fish (a kind of "muscle
milk"), somewhat reminiscent of how Taylor Lautner did the same thing for
the Twilight movies (not a good idea normally at age 16). I cannot fathom
altering my vulnerable body for a movie -- except maybe my own!

The
language of the film is Limburgish, a form of Dutch heavily influenced by
German. The film showed at AFI-Los Angeles and Palm Springs film
festivals.

The
DVD has a 25-minute short, “The One Thing to Do” (“Une seule chose a
faire”), from CCCP and Arte France, where Schoeanaerts and Tibo Vanderborre
play two young “pre-terrorists” meeting with an older mercenary (Serge
Henri-Valcke) in an outdoor restaurant in Corisca. After an ideological
discussion (with some combat flashbacks, that seem to be relate to the Bosnian
civil war in the 90s) about how it’s important to make everybody in the world
play the game of life by the same rules, a plot twist occurs (along with some
scenes of mass bodies) where the mercenary is to be apprehended for war crimes.

Saturday, July 21, 2012

I’m not particularly a comic book fan. I saw “The Dark Knight Rises” this afternoon
at an ETS presentation at AMC Tysons Corner.
All the Imax performances were sold out, but this one was maybe 80%
full. The security environment, much discussed by the media since Friday's tragedy in Colorado, was low-key.

I think Nolan’s worldview (of shifting realities) actually
works better when he starts in “this universe” rather than a parallel one (like
a comic book franchise). The style of
filmmaking resembles “Inception”, but the “message” isn’t quite as compelling. What is left is a typically entertaining
action film, long, with some good ideas.

Nolan uses the same music composer, Hans Zimmer, whose music
builds powerful circuits around ground bass themes. The look of the film is a little darker than “Inception”,
and seems much less “real” than even the dream components of the 2010
masterpiece.

As Bruce Wayne eight years later, Christian Bale really doesn’t
look much worse for wear as he enters early middle age. Still, the characters
don’t look as “comic-con” as in other comics movies. The villain, Bane (Tom
Hardy) wears a simple mouthpiece that would appear to hide a
disfigurement. (The “Joker” costume does
not appear.)

Michael Caine is still endearing as Alfred, who is supposed
to know everything but let others take the glory. But the sweetheart character is the young
cop, Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who had been raised in an orphanage. At the end, the senior Wayne insists that
most of his wealth go to the orphanage rather than just to pass along wealth to
family.

A lot is said about the dark violence in action movies like
this. The stock exchange attack hardly seems very real, but the implosion of
Gotham’s sewer system, which causes a football field to sink (Nolan doesn’t
care that the real stadium is in New Jersey, but this is “parallel universe”)
is quite original. There is a backstory involving Wayne’s (Batman’s) escape
from a dungeon that recalls a similar effect from “The Ring” movies. He needs some “lesbian upper body strength”
to get out, on his own.

The script has many “national security” concepts worthy of
serious dramatic treatment. I thought I
heard EMP mentioned once. At the end,
Batman and his allies have to prevent a neutron bomb from going off in Gotham
(aka New York), and it get shipped out into the ocean, maybe not far enough.

At the professional football game, a kid sings the Star
Spangled Banner, a cappella, but I was reminded of midshipman Joseph Steffan’s
singing it at an Army-Navy game in the 1980s.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Here’s a curious little (87 min) film from Derek Jarman and
Paul Humfress, dating back to 1976, from Kino.

It is called “Sebastiane”. And it’s not the name of a cantankerous
apartment cat. No, Sebastianus (Lenoardo Treviglio) is a Roman soldier in 300
AD, exiled to a remote arid post for practicing Christianity.

The men, isolated
situationally from women, turn to one another.
When Sebastian rejects an advance, he is persecuted to the point of a
crucifixion scene (with bow and arrow) at the end of the film.

The film would sound like a downer today, but in 1976 it was
viewed as daring. And the speech is actually in Latin.

Life in the film is grimy and gratuitously intimate (an issue
always debated in the military), and not glitzy as in those 1950s Fox
Cinemascope spectacles about Roman life. (I remember crying at the end of "The Robe" in 1953, again about persecution.) The film, however, is shot in full wide screen, almost as if to mock the
spectacle genre.

The film opens with a bizarre costume party sequence, and
contains bizarre scenes of a soldier shaving his own body with a sword before
he does likewise to Sebastian. This is
rather uncommon in film (although remember a scene like that in “Deliverance”).

Is the film as decadent as Bob Gucionne's sprawling "Caligula" (1979), which I do remember seeing Dallas?

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Henry Miller’s novel “Tropic of Cancer” was notorious after
being banned as “obscene” from the United States in the 1930s; it would be
re-published by Grove Press in 1961 and “cleared” by the Supreme Court in 1964.

Paramount made the film in 1969, about the time I would be
getting out of the Army. The film offers
Rip Torn as the expatriate writer living in Paris (in the early 60s), living is
adventurous life one day at a time.

His wife even pays him a visit, and he accuses her of having
lice! (That issue came up in Basic Training in the Army!) Later, there are all kinds of
meandering misadventures, such as a gig teaching English in Dijon, where Henry
uses a lot of creative metaphors in front of teenage males.

The film has Miller narrating by reading graphic text from
his novel. The language, as well as some
“full” scenes (showing the “rosebush”) is responsible for the DVD itself (from
Olive Films) sporting an NC-17.

What was striking for me was the “attitude” of Miller and
some of his make “friends” in the film. There
is a curious juxtaposition of wanting the responsibility of fatherhood and
seeing other women as playthings. It’s
hard for a non-heterosexual to grasp.

Joseph Strick directed the film.

See review of a film about the Grove Press here March 14,
2012.

Henry Miller was also a painter. There is a 4-minute YouTube short, "To Paint Is to Love Again" on his painting career.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Because New York City’s (that is, Manhattan’s) Central Park
is a large natural oasis in a huge “concrete jungle” spanning four states, a
relatively large population of birds pass through on migration and also liv
there. The documentary featured a huge
population of colorful male birds normally seen in bird textbooks but rarely
seen in practice. These included a large
number or warblers, and a Baltimore Oriole.

It’s rather interesting that in nature, it’s the male that
is often conspicuous for color and physical beauty. This is most notable with birds, but happens
with some other social animals (like lions).
The showering of the female with the mystique of beauty is a
particularly human invention (parodied or overcome in the male gay community,
perhaps). Of course, with “eusocial” insects
the opposite prevails: the female is often larger, and the queen rules the
world, literally.

The film, like many nature documentaries (such as those from
the Disney era of the 50s) is divided into seasons, starting in spring. Despite
this past mild winter, we got to see Central Park under snow.

The most visible human personality was probably Starr
Saphir, who has led birding walks all year (particularly in fall in spring) for
decades, for a small charge.

Monday, July 16, 2012

The filmmaker name "Justin Lerner" rings a bell. I can't quite place it from my own past.

I received (from Strand) a screener for his first feature, “Girlfriend”,
with DVD to be released Aug. 7, 2012.

The film depicts the evolution of a friendship between a
young man with Down’s Syndrome and a single mother in a small town in
Massachusetts (Wayland). What is remarkable is that Lerner cast a former
high school classmate, Evan Sneider, who actually has Down’s for the part.

Lerner could not write the exact words for the script for
Evan’s part. Instead, Evan somewhat believed the story and spoke in his natural
manner, which is humble, direct, and compassionate. Usually his actions seem “right”; it is the
expectations of “normal” society that stand out in relief.

When Evan’s mother dies, she leaves him an inheritance in
the form of cash in a box. (Curiously,
there is a similar scene and concept in the recent Hollywood film “People Like
Us” (July 6, 2012). Evan tries to help neighbor single mom Candy (Shannon
Woodward), by dumping cash gifts in her home.
But Candy’s problems are bigger than what Evan can comprehend. They include an unforgiving landlord, and a
very jealous ex-boyfriend Russ (Jackson Rathbone), who then tries to manipulate
Evan.

Evan wants to help her just out of his own nature. He doesn't question who was personally "responsible" for her poverty and for a now fatherless son. But I think most of the rest of us would.

Complications come when Evan awakes to what relationships
are perhaps all about, and soon he expects “something” in return. As Dr. Oz would say, he wants her to “love
him back.” She must become his "girlfriend".

The DVD has three shorts about making the film, the music
score by “100 Monkeys” (no relation to “12 Monkeys”), and a BBC interview. Lerner insists that his project is pure
storytelling and would work with a character with various other possible
issues. My reaction to this is complex.
I was considered physically “behind” when I was growing up (was teased)
and a little bit autistic; so what should be expected of me (in terms of
performing in a “normal” way) was seen as a moral issue.

I must say that I personally would resent anyone's imposing a "relationship" on me, however grateful I needed to be in practice.

The film (94 min) is shot in full 2.35:1 format and uses
fall scenery effectively and fills the screen with many two-character shots.

The film is an official selection of the Toronto Film Festival, and appeared in Gotham, Woods Hole, and Mill Valley film festivals.

Lerner has four other short films on Vimeo on his own site. (None of them were on the sample DVD.)

These films demonstrate other aspects of Lerner’s interest
in people’s needs for relationships and connections.

“The Replacement Child” (2007, 25 min, also 2.35:1) shows an 18 year
old Todd Turnbull (Travis Quentin Young) returning to his hillbilly home after
a year in reform school for hitting his stepfather. He is taunted about
religious faith and a policeman even tests his temper. But when he finds his
best friend dying and the faith-healing parents refusing to have the boy
treated, he has to take measures into his own hands, again. The surprise ending
explains the title. Evan Sneider appears
here as Todd’s “boss” when he gets his job back in a fast-food joint. This film is the closest in style to "Girlfriend" and makes a good companion piece.

“Maggie’s Not Here” (2006, 20 min), shows Maggie (Alisha
Seaton) working in a college library.
She loves Richard (Michael Kass), who has a dissertation and is the more
obviously “good looking”, but has to deal with the jealousy and physicality of
an older man Luke (Wesley Stiller), as well as her own pain during culmination
of any relationship. The rivals have at
least one physical confrontation (a common thread on Lerner’s films).

“Echostop” (2005, 12 min) presents a woman Anna (Hope
Taylor) who faces the permanent loss of her boyfriend (Jona Newhall) – really permanent
– when she leaves her home for the day.

“Solo” (2004, 3 min) has Roy (Geoffrey Gould) playing a game
of air hockey on an LA rooftop ("Vertigo" anyone?), , and needing a playmate (Jason Cole). Again, a confrontation ensues.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

The 2010 indie thriller “Legacy”, from “Black Camel” and “CodeBlack
Entertainment” (and Vivendi), with
director Thomas Ikimi, achieves a lot as a low budget conspiracy thriller. It puts together plot threads from “Manchurian
Candidate” with “Inception” in a claustrophobic stage-play-likeness set mostly
in an grimey warehouse and then in a “grungy as can be” Brooklyn apartment.

The film, supposedly an American thriller, was actually shot
in Scotland by a Nigerian company (emphasizing black characters mostly), and
unfolds through the consciousness of Malcolm Gray (Irdis Elba), who has somehow
escaped from a rehab hospital after his Black Ops team in Eastern Europe was
betrayed. He holes up in the barren
apartment, where you’re glad to have a fridge and probably couldn’t afford
cable.

In the meantime, his visible brother, Senator (R-NY) Darnell
(Eamonn Walker) is talking tough on terror in all the press interviews as he
prepares to announce his candidacy for president.

The film often teases us with newspaper “front page” clips
and television excerpts suggesting that the US is turning into a police state
as a result of the “war on terror”. We
learn that Darnell had a lot to do with breaking up a plot to bring Sarin into
the United States (possibly from stockpiles in the former Soviet Union – a problem
well known with nuclear and biological weapons, too). But that activity may have betrayed Malcolm’s
unit.

Is Malcolm really back in the US, brainwashed to take out
his brother? Or is it even “worse”? In this film, there really is a potential for
spoilers.

The film does raise other points. Do US intelligence services regularly use
uniformed servicemembers? (Here, Malcolm is an Army WO.) Black ops isn’t the same as a Seals raid (as
with Osama bin Laden) is it? The movies
seem obsessed with the “extreme rendition” possibilities in intelligence, and
seem to overlook the problem solving that would be needed when clues are
obscure but menacing. I can speculate further. Could intelligence
services pick up a potential EMP scud attack, perhaps launched from a pirated
boat?

The film makes simple and effective use of everyday
props. One wonders if it needed the full
2.35:1 aspect ratio.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

The title of the film “Road to Nowhere”, by Monte Hellman,
is itself layered with multiple meanings. The film actually shows, with a bit
of noir, the unfinished tunnel in the Smoky Mountains at the end of the road, which
started in the 1940s, as well as the controversial dam, into which a small
plane crashes in a critical scene.
(There’s a site explaining the road here).

The title also refers, besides to the film, to a fictitious
film which its lead character, a handsome likeable director Mitch (Tygh Runyan) is
making about a North Caroline political scandal (not really that close to John
Edwards).

When Mitch hires an
inexperienced actress Laurel (Shannon Sossamon) from the “real world” to get
closer to the real case, he, shall we say, gets more than he bargained
for. OK, he finds Laurel romantically irresistable Is Laurel really Velma, murdered
(in the “Revenge”-style plane crash)? If so, that would take this film into "Vertigo" territory. In
the meantime, another consultant, Bruno (Waylon Payne) seems to be
investigating Mitch.

Outside is all of this is a blog run by Natalie (Dominique
Swain), which had inspired Mitch to make the film, but which has now inspired
its own “Road to Nowhere” DVD.

In my own “Do Ask Do Tell” script, I have a structure like
this: there is an inner fictitious
screenplay about a possibly questionable encounter between a substitute teacher
like “Bill” and a precocious student, there is a whole life story which incorporates
the way the screenplay affected the real world, and there is an ashram, in the
afterlife or on another planet, where Bill and various other characters have
been brought . The “dude” in the inner
screenplay is an “angel” running the show, and he has, by surfing Bill’s life
and online presence, brought (or “abducted”) others to the ashram to carry Bill
through his own particular tests (which can cross timelines). The outcome of the tests affects how these
other characters will turn out in the “Purification”, most of which they have
escaped (on Earth). “Bill” will find out
that he is essentially different from many other people who have been taken in
some particular aspect.

The Hellman film embeds some clips of famous films (the chess scene in "The Seventh Seal") and has a few embedded cameos (Leonardo di Caprio and Jack Nicholson). Perhaps the title will remind us of David Lynch and "Lost Highway" -- and some of the same noir (and North Carolina location) is here, if not all the outright weirdness.

In the end, of course, a “layered” film has to add up – else
it’s gone “nowhere”. For Mitch, whom we have come to admire, it leads to lockup. Not all ends well here.

The official site (uses QuickTime) from Monterey Video
(2010), is here.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Documentary filmmakers Ross Finkel, Trevor Martin and
Jonathan Paley have reported on how Major League Baseball groomed at least two
players (Miguel Angel Sano and Jean Carlos Batista) in the Dominican Republic
in their film “Ballplayer: Pelotero”, now in theaters from Strand Releasing,
with Bobby Valentine (Manager of the Boston Red Sox) as an executive producer. (There is a story on this by Steve Silva in
Boston.com, link here.)

The major league clubs have facilities – sometimes full “academies”
– to train players, who can sign on July 2 of every year at age 16. Players
get the maximum contracts at that age, so MLB goes to great lengths, with
background investigations (and medical exams including bone scans) to prove
that they are not in fact older. MLB
also checks for performance enhancing drugs – in blood, urine, and even poop. Some teams are fussier than others on the age
issue, and most teams also bring some players from other areas of Latin America
(such as Venezuela) to the “academies” in the DR. Twenty percent of all MLB
players have spent time in the Dominican Republic; many grew up there.

The players are motivated to get the largest possible
bonuses to provide for their families – that means parents and siblings, not
their own (future) children.

There’s an early scene where a couple of (black) players say, “We
are smooth, but the Americans aren’t smooth.”
That sounds odd, but later in the film, the camera dawdles on a player’s
shaved underarm.

Trevor Martin was present for a Q&A for three shows
Friday at the West End Cinema in Washington DC. The directors spent nine months in the DR
making the film. The country borders
Haiti. It was not badly affected by the 2010 earthquake, but it does have a border
and “immigration” issue with Haiti.

MLB would not let the filmmakers interview it about the
practices. Many teams (the Twins, the
Astros, the Pirates) allowed them to film around the academies, but a few teams
(the Yankees and Indians) refused.

The film aired in many festivals, including Miami, Sarasota,
Boston and Cleveland. I think it just missed Silverdocs.

The film is narrated (in English) by John Leguizamo. The Spanish of the players is very difficult to follow (there are subtitles), for viewers used to "Madrid" or "Argentine" Spanish in film.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Back in at the end of the earlier “first” Spider Man
movie, Tobey Maquire, as Peter Parker,
announced “I am Spider Man. With great power comes great responsibility.”

I think Tobey Maguire had more fun (“Whee!”) with the role
than Andrew Garfield does in Marc Webb’s new 3-D summer Marvel comic book epic,
“The Amazing Spider-Man”. (It’s a little
soon for an entire franchise remake.) But Garfield, now 28, both very lean and
very muscular, really has the charisma for the role nevertheless. As the AP
high school student by day who generates his jelly suit by night, he pulls it
off.

Here, Peter Parker is attending a science high school in
NYC, and the little subplot about bullying seems out of place. When he interns at the high profile biotech
company, he gets fascinated with the opportunities and gets himself bit by the
arachnid.

Yes, there’s the story of his missing parents (associated
with the research), and the death of his uncle Ben (Martin Sheen), as the
aftermath of an encounter with a street thug.
There’s the overzealous (but not evil) Dr. Curt Connors (Rhys Ifans),
who, wanting to grow his arm back with spider venom, turns into a golem or
dinosaur. Dennis Leary places the police
captain who suspects Peter’s vigilantism, and Emma Stone (the cop’s daughter)
will be Peter’s loyal girl friend (no "Gossip Girl" here), who will have to clean up Peter’s mauled
chest in one scene after an encounter with the golem’s claws.

There’s a line from Uncle Ben, “life’s about responsibility,
not choice.” But that’s early on, when
Peter, just discovering his powers, doesn’t show up home in time to walk his
aunt May (Sally Field) home in the dark. Yes, as a young male, he’s expected to be protective
of extended family.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

When a man falls down in life, is it over, or should he (in
a finite world) have another chance?

The 2007 Sundance Institute film by Ryan Eslinger, “When a
Man Falls in the Forest”, perhaps provides an existential dramatization of that
question, as four “failed” people in a snowy city (Toronto), just before the
holidays, interact and stumble.

In the beginning, a blue-collar (literally) building janitor
Bill (Dylan Baker) enjoys opera (Catalini’s “La Wally”, not credited) as he
works at night, and tries to rest days in his apartment to motivational tapes
that teach lucid dreaming. This
potential get carried far enough that he dreams vividly about an earthquake
with a heroic skyscraper rescue. (Was Christopher Nolan familiar with this film before he made "Inception"?)

A coworker Gary (Timothy Hutton) is agoraphobic (but watches
a video of a 60s balloon ride to get over it) and has to deal with his kleptomaniac
wife (Sharon Stone). Another coworker
Travis (Pruitt Taylor Vince) had bullied Bill (because of his apparent autism)
in high school and is trying to make amends.

Gary has a brilliant son (David Williams) who is finishing
advanced calculus before college.

The characters seem to stumble for the first seventy minutes
of the film (in one scene, Bill’s legs collapse under him literally in an
elevator and is picked up by coworkers), but then a tragedy happens to
Gary. As a bystanding shopper in a
convenience store, he hesitates to give an armed robber his wallet and is shot
dead instantly and brutally. He falls,
gone, because his life was taken from him by force, perhaps to serve another
man’s survival needs. The son will ask
Travis what his father had been like before marriage, because he couldn’t
conceive of his dad as a single man, without mom (a relationship). Yet, he fell.

This is a somewhat unpleasant film, perhaps, and only
moderately popular with viewers. But perhaps it makes us ponder our place in
life, how it depends on fortune, and our willingness to connect with others
(and keep those connections) on terms not always of our own choosing.

The (DGC) film (from Rigel and Insight Film) was distributed
by Screen Media.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

The road film “Here”, by Braden King, has a simple enough
premise, with “a man and a woman”; and
it takes a leisurely stroll through Armenia (the former Soviet republic – not Albania)
consuming over two hours. But it covers
a lot of moral territory, and entertains us with “Tree of Life” styled video
from another of New Wave filmmakers.

Peter Coyote narrates and asks the existential questions
about the relationship between science and – not faith, but dreams and maybe
art. Then we meet the man, Will Shepard,
handsome (about 30), blond and hairy (played by Ben Foster – in “Prometheus”, “Alpha Dog”,
“30 Days of Night”), is the lone scientist-cartographer, working alone (by choice) all over
the world in a “ground-truthing” project, doing surveying to provide details to
add to satellite data to make new maps.
During the movie his work starts to fail in quality, possibly because of
equipment problems. (His computer
terminal has an email program that
reminds one of the DOS days of the 1990s.)
He’s in trouble, and this may be his last contract.

But he has met, in a rural café, Gadarine Najarian (Lubna
Azabal), a photographer and artist (about 25) who has returned home from Canada and Europe
and whose family resents her independence.
Her brother calls her the “prodigal sister” while their father is dying.
But she goes on the road with Will, and, as the precepts of their lives are
challenged, they gradually (if predictably) become intimate. Yes, reproduction rules.

The film, which (in 2.35:1) is breathtaking in scenery, takes us to the Iran border, and
also to the dangerous Nagorno-Karabagh region. The filmmakers faces as many
perils in real life as did the characters.

The film was made with sponsorship with the Sundance
Institute and Tribeca. It got into and won awards in beaucoup festivals.

The Strand DVD releases July 17. It includes eight brief videos (providing background in the film), collectively called the “Explorer
Story Interludes”. They are “Girl from
Moush” by Garine Turossain;
“Actual Size” by Barbara Meter and another by Naomi Umash; “Cloud Mapper” (with an image of a derecho, perhaps) by
Ben Rivers; “Astronomer” by Julie Murray; “Alchemist” by Bill Morrison; “Shadow
Explorer” by Guy Sherwin; “Found Footage”, by Aghdam.

Monday, July 09, 2012

“Beasts of the Southern Wild”, winner of the Grand Jury
drama prize at Sundance and also a winner at Cannes, is part fantasy (“Pan’s
Labyrinth”, maybe), and part NatGeo drama that seems to be inspired by
Hurricane Katrina. The film, directed (and largely written) by Benh Zeitlin is one
of those cinema experiences that inserts us in another world and makes us live through
its hardships and personal attachments. It is uneven, curious, unsettling, and
powerful, all at the same time. People
in some communities have no choice as to how they will live and as to the human
attachments they must form and maintain (that is, “social capital” is essential
to their survival).

Hushpuppy (Quevenzhane Wallis) is a precocious (African
American) six year old living in ramshackle community (“The Bathtub”) in lower Louisiana, in a part
of the Delta already partly washed away by dredging and threatened by rising
sea levels. She has accumulated some
book learning about global warming, Al Gore style, and already imagines melting
ice caps. She has learned to cook,
rather recklessly with the primitive gas stoves in the family’s mobile home.
One day, she accidentally sets the house on fire, and her mother
disappears. Her father Wink (Dwight
Henry) gives her tough love as she seeks mom in a growing maelstrom. A storm, possibly like Katrina, comes and
floods everyone out. Everyone resists
the government’s effort to rescue them and make them stay in approved shelters
(in sight of the oil refineries). The film makes reference to levies and possible deliberate flooding of their homeland to appease oil companies, shipping channels and big cities (New Orleans). But
other mysteries are unfolding. Ancient oxen-like boars called aurochs run amok
and do more devastation (like tearing down remaining power lines), but seem to like Hushpuppy. Wink falls ill, vomiting blood, and has been teaching Hushpuppy to survive
completely on her own, nabbing catfish with her bare hands (as in another 2001
indie film called “Okie Noodling", directed by Bradley Beesley, sometimes shown on PBS).

There’s a touching rescue scene, in the middle, where a
woman tells Hushpuppy, “You have to learn to take care of people weaker and
sweeter than you.” It seems odd that
everyone pressures Hushpuppy to be dependable when she really seems to be
pretty good at doing things (despite the accident).

Is this film a warning of how “the purification” could
start?

The music is by Dan Romer and the director and is riveting.

On YouTube, the young director (writer and composer)
explains how he developed the film at Sundance Institute, and how he had to
rework the story in accordance with the non-actors that he found. Hushpuppy wound up being younger than he had
originally expected (he had imagined someone about 11). He says the Institute puts every idea in your
script under a microscope. The end
credits mentioned a “substitute teacher”
rather than “studio teacher”.

Sunday, July 08, 2012

The 2002 film “Dahmer”, directed by David Jacobson, is a
dramatization of the notorious life, from fantasy to horrifying acts, of
Jeffrey Dahmer, who is played by Jeremy Renner.

The visitor is invited to read the detailed biography in
Wikipedia. It is graphic, and the
details need not be dwelled upon for their own sake here. But Dahmer’s history was obviously very
troubled long before his final period in Milwaukee.

The film focuses on his life in that apartment 213 in a
low-income area of Milwaukee. He could be seductive with his guests. It’s perhaps interesting to compare this real
life tragedy with a famous gay horror short with a somewhat similar theme,
“Bugcrush” (Jan. 29, 2008), where the
viewer wants to pull the “guest” right out of the movie scene but is still
titillated by the perpetrator.

The film does cover, in flashbacks, some of Dahmer’s
troubled relationship with his father (Bruce Davison) and grandmother, as well
as an episode in Ohio at age 18 where, when home alone, he invites a fellow
high school wrestler over, leading to a violent end, activity which he would
not resume for nin years. At one point,
he tells the wrestler that he (the wrestler) will get married, have kids, and
develop a pot belly, and presumably ruin the fantasy of perfection that he
could display in youth. In the
commentary after, the filmmakers noted that Dahmer saw people just as object
for his own pleasure.

The film shows, early, a missed opportunity by police to
catch him, as well as another one in Ohio when he was stopped for drinking and
driving. It does not go into detail on the final arrest (although it shows the
evening with the young man that led to it), or the trial; and it gives only a
few images of life in a Wisconsin prison, where he would be slain by another
inmate after just two years of incarceration.

There are a few other interesting scenes that are well done: his being trained to work in a chocolate factory, and a scene where a bouncer tosses him out of a gay bar.

Lionsgate has a similar film from 2006 “Raising Jeffrey
Dahmer” by Rich Ambler, apparently more from the viewpoint of his father.

The idea of a dramatization of a notorious person like this
is to dramatize what makes him tick. Still, I think that the subject matter is
better served by documentary. For example, I think it would be good if a documentary
filmmaker (maybe even someone like Morgan Spurlock) made a film about a few of
the more disturbing cases caught in the Dateline Internet stings. While the people are disturbing, the actions
in the criminal justice system and treatment programs are important to
document. The case of Rabbi David Kaye
is particularly disturbing, for example, because it was so long before he was even prosecuted. What happens to people when they are finally
on “supervised probation”? What on earth
is their “treatment” like?

Saturday, July 07, 2012

You can tell that “Safety Not Guaranteed” is a Duplass
Brothers movie (they are executive producers) even before you see the time adventurer, a 40-ish grocery store
clerk Kenneth (Mark Duplass). Just the
goofy style – you expect to see a puffy chair in the first motel scene.

The premise is interesting. Jeff (Jake M. Johnson) gets
assigned two interns, Darius (Aubrey Plaza) and Arnau (Karan Soni) to do a
story about a guy who advertised for a time travel partner in their hip Seattle
magazine. (The companion must bring his
or her own weapon.) Right off the bat,
we have a good question – is it ethical or legal for media companies to get
their dirty work done by unpaid interns? (See Books blog, Ross Perlin’s “Intern
Nation”, June 8, 2011). It gets worse when Jeff shares the motel room as they
go to coastal Washington State to hunt down the purported time traveler. Darius
gets her own bed, and Arnau (a quite handsome 21 year old) gets pointers on how
to pick up girls.

They track down Kenneth, and, after some subterfuge, he
agrees that Darius would make for a totally appropriate platonic companion (the
script mentions that she is a lesbian). We start getting into the paradoxes of his
life history, and wonder if this proof that time travel can work (despite the unidirectional
nature of the “time arrow of physics”). Furthermore, fibbies – bald G-men in good
clothes – are chasing him.

The end may seem like a combination of “Contact” with “Another
Earth”. Maybe people get another chance. But, up to the conclusion, this film doesn't take itself too seriously.

The idea that a journalist is “challenged” by some mystery
close to home can make for an interesting premise. In my screenplay “Titanium”,
a philandering young journalist is confronted by reports that his pregnant fiancé
has “gone up” during a violent Texas storm accompanied by UFO sightings, when
the police are not impressed.

The director is Colin Trevorrow and the line producer is Derek Connolly.

The official site (from Film District, Alliance Atlantis and
Big Beach Films) ishere.

I saw the film at the AMC Shirlington in Arlington on a
Saturday afternoon. There were some
projection problems, as one channel of sound often dropped out.

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